quickstart w/ libvirt

Simple recipe for spinning up VMs on Libvirt from zero

su -c “yum install @virtualization“

This sets up all the virtualization entries.  I never remember to use it, but more about why you should use it here.

Create disk for a VM and attach it

qemu-img create -f raw /VirtualMachines/fedora-disk-2.img 10G

Set up a FEDORA VM from source:
 
IMGNAME=vm1-fedora
# create image file
virt-install \
–name $IMGNAME \
–ram 5000 \
–cpu host \
–vcpus 2 \
–os-type=linux \
–os-variant=rhel6 \
–location=http://mirror.pnl.gov/fedora/linux/releases/20/Fedora/x86_64/os/ \
–disk path=/var/lib/libvirt/images/$IMGNAME.$EXT,size=10,format=qcow2
Then attach the above created disk:

virsh attach-disk vm1-fedora /VirtualMachines/idh2.img –target vda –driver qemu

And in case you wanted CentOS, just for diversity, we’ll add the same snippet here.  Notice not much change. 

Set up a CentOS VM from source.
IMGNAME=vm2-centos
# create image file
virt-install \
–name $IMGNAME \
–ram 5000 \
–cpu host \
–vcpus 2 \
–os-type=linux \
–os-variant=rhel6 \
–location=http://mirror.catn.com/pub/centos/6/os/x86_64 \
–disk path=/var/lib/libvirt/images/$IMGNAME.$EXT,size=10,format=qcow2